By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor<\/p>\n
The Spain Park Jaguars looked like one of the best teams in the state down the stretch last year, growing from a dominant area run into a legitimate title contender that fell just short in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Now, the landscape looks different as Class 6A is now the highest classification, and the players look different with the graduations of Cailyn Kyes, Bea Wiggins and Ja\u2019Niyah Moseley. However, the Jags are still the same threatening team that they\u2019ve always been.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for us, the biggest thing is to not compare ourselves to last year,\u201d Spain Park coach Justin Kisor said. \u201cWe can’t do that. It’s a different team, different path. I think that we’ve got to find our own identity with this team, and I think that starts with our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a very young team, with just one senior in returning defensive specialist Madden Scott. Even so, it\u2019s still a very experienced team with four players back who had some starting experience in October.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s highlighted on the offensive end by Peyton Harrington, the All-County First Team outside who blossomed into one of the most athletic and devastating pin hitters in the state as a sophomore last year.<\/p>\n
Harrington was thrown into the fire as a freshman in 2024 to make up for an injured Wiggins, and Kisor believes that paid huge dividends in 2025. Now, he just gets to sit back and watch her follow in the lineage of Audrey Rothman, Megan Ingersoll and Wiggins as elite outside hitters at Spain Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me to just let her go out there and play six rotations is huge for us,\u201d Kisor said of Harrington. \u201cAnd so, that was one thing that I really enjoy her hard work and she’s a great athlete. So, she does a lot of things that\u2019s like, \u2018Holy crap, this is insane.\u2019 She wowed me with her ability to just make athletic plays.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiggins\u2019 graduation opens up the opposite pin, which will be filled with one of last postseason\u2019s standouts in Chloe Shumate. She backed up Moseley at middle blocker last year but broke out in the second half of the season, eventually hitting .400 for regionals and state to make the All-County Second Team.<\/p>\n
Now, she gets a full-time spot to showcase her offensive and defensive capabilities. She will still split time at the middle in addition to the outside, but sophomore Sarah Latham will take the driver\u2019s seat there with junior Emilie Taylor and sophomore Kendall Hyde helping as well.<\/p>\n
Kisor said that even more than her progress on the court, she\u2019s grown into an even greater leader for the Jags. It\u2019s leadership that starts at home, as she is the daughter of UAB men\u2019s basketball assistant Chris Shumate.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe’s taken a huge leap in leadership in real life,\u201d Kisor said of Shumate. \u201cShe is a competitor and she’s a bit more vocal this year than she was last year, which is good for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also good for Spain Park, which lost a pair of vocal firebrands in the Shelby County Player of the Year Cailyn Kyes and Moseley plus the veteran leadership of Wiggins.<\/p>\n
Even with all the production they lost, Kisor is more concerned with the leadership that\u2019s now gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing I think with us there is just a leadership that we lose,\u201d Kisor said of the Class of 2026. \u201cYeah, their skill was really good, but their leadership was special. But they did a really good job of teaching our younger girls like how to lead and what that looks like. And so, I think we are losing three really good players, great players, but we’re losing like even better leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
To his point, Kisor said Harrington is working to become more vocal alongside Camdyn Kyes, the sophomore All-State libero now entering her mind-boggling fourth year as a starter. Their veteran presences will anchor the Jags for the next two seasons both on the stat sheet and in the huddle, helping them recapture the player-driven leadership that marked last year\u2019s squad.<\/p>\n
The loss of a county Player of the Year does open a starting setter spot though. It\u2019s one that Kisor plans on filling with a 6-2 rotation, tasking junior Peyton Bohan and sophomore multi-sport star Lynlee Franks with splitting the sets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor The Spain Park Jaguars looked like one of the best teams in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[543,541,17,539,540,28356],"class_list":["post-73389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-280-reporter","tag-hoover","tag-spain","tag-spain-park","tag-spain-park-high-school","tag-volleyball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}